“Why?” asked Nina.

“Because we’ve run out of water. Mighty Jack’s floating on the surface. There’s air inside that temple.”

TWENTY

The submersibles returned to the surface. The Sharkdozer was recovered and winched back aboard the Evenor, but the Atragon remained in the water, a cable attached so it could recharge its batteries.

A second dive was being prepared. And this time, the exploration of the temple would not be left to robots.

“I wish I could go with you,” Nina said. Kari, Chase and Castille were in the final stages of suiting up for their descent.

“Bet you wish you’d brought your swimming certificate, don’t you?” Chase joked as a crewman assisted him with his helmet.

The three divers were wearing newly designed “deep suits”-a kind of hybrid of traditional scuba systems and the armorlike, almost robotic hard suits employed for deep, long-duration dives. The divers’ limbs were enclosed in the same neoprene rubber used in regular dry suits, but their heads and bodies were contained in a rigid unit connected to ring seals around the thighs and upper arms.

At a depth of eight hundred feet, close to the limits of scuba diving, the pressure on a diver’s body was over twenty-five atmospheres, requiring air to be supplied at an equal pressure to enable his lungs to expand against the crushing force surrounding them. But breathing such highly pressurized gas came with a price: the compressed gas that entered the bloodstream expanded as the diver ascended and the pressure around him reduced. Nitrogen bubbles swelled inside the blood vessels, causing excruciating pain, tissue damage and even death…

Decompression sickness. The bends.

The deep suits were a way to avoid this. By keeping the body within a shell able to withstand the external pressure, the divers breathed air at just one atmosphere, while keeping their arms and legs free to move with far greater maneuverability underwater than in any heavy, clumsy hard suit. It was a compromise-it was impossible to turn or bend at the waist, and the fact that their limbs were exposed to the pressure of the deep still placed limits on how long they could remain submerged-but it hugely reduced the risk of the bends.

“You’ll still be able to watch us on the video feed,” Kari promised.

“It’s not the same thing. This sort of discovery really should be hands-on.”

“Don’t worry,” Castille said. “We’ll bring you back a golden Nereid.”

“God, no! Leave everything exactly as you find it, please! And on that subject…” She turned to Chase. “Do you really have to take explosives with you?”

“If the passage is blocked higher up, we might need to clear it. Don’t worry, I’m not going to blow the whole place up! I know what I’m doing.”

“I hope so.” She rapped his helmet. “What’s it like in there?”

“Cramped. Good thing I’m not claustrophobic.”

“Lucky you,” sighed Castille. He looked down at the yellow shell covering his body. “I feel as though I’m trapped inside a giant bar of soap.”

“Or a corset,” added Kari, putting a hand on the waist of her own suit. While Chase and Castille’s units were of a generic design, size adjustments made by moving the seals on their limbs, hers was custom made to fit her precisely, still managing to show off her feminine shape beneath the steel and polycarbonate. “This must be how Victorian women felt!”

“Yeah, as they fell off the Titanic,” joked Chase.

“That was Edwardian, not Victorian,” Nina corrected him.

“Bloody historians ruin all my jokes…” He looked at his companions as the crewmen closed the last clips on their suits. “Okay… Are we ready?”

“Absolutely,” Kari said enthusiastically.

“Ready to go into danger again?” said Castille, rather less so. “Well, if I must…”

“Come on, Hugo, you love it,” grinned Chase. “And at least you don’t have to worry about helicopters down there.”

“Ah, but what is a submersible but an underwater helicopter?”

Chase banged a hand on Castille’s helmet. “Yeah, yeah. Now stop moaning and get your Belgian arse in the water!”

With the three divers holding on to its steel bumper cage, the Atragon disappeared into the ocean.

Nina watched it go before hurrying to the control room. Chase’s suit had a video camera mounted on the right shoulder, transmitting to the Atragon along a fiberoptic link, the submersible in turn sending the image to the ship via its umbilical. “Hey, Kari, I can see you,” she said, putting on a headset. The figure on the screen waved its free hand.

“Divers, can you check coms?” asked Trulli from the next monitor station. “Eddie?”

“Loud and clear,” said Chase. His voice was distorted, but no more so than if he’d been talking on a telephone.

“Kari?”

Her response was more garbled, heavily marred by static. “I can hear you, but there’s a lot of interference.”

“Same for me,” Castille’s voice crackled.

“What’s the range of those transmitters?” Philby asked. Chase’s communications systems were hardwired to the submersible, but to avoid the risk of entangling cables, Kari and Castille were using an underwater radio link, making him a human relay station.

“At most, maybe fifteen meters,” Trulli told him. “Depends on the salinity of the water. If it’s real salty, the signal attenuation could be so much that it’ll only travel two or three meters. That close, you’re better off just shouting.”

“You guys?” Nina said into the mike. “Make sure you stay close together, huh?” Kari gave her a thumbs-up.

The descent was slower than the first, but Captain Matthews had moved the Evenor directly over the site of the temple to reduce the transit time on the sea floor. Before long, the structure appeared on the LIDAR display.

“Okay, divers?” said Baillard. “I’m going to set down where I did before, at the edge of the excavation.”

Nina watched the view from Chase’s camera. The Atragon had fewer spotlights than a conventional submersible, so the temple was little more than an oppressive shade against the near black of the sea. A small flurry of sand swirled up under the thrusters as the sub came to rest with a gentle bump.

“Evenor,” Baillard announced, “we are down and safe. Divers? Good luck.”

Chase let go of the tubular bumper and dropped to the seabed. Kari and Castille followed. “Okay, we’re here. Radio check.”

“I hear you,” said Kari.

“Radio check okay,” Castille confirmed. Then, more casually: “I have an itch right in the middle of my back. I think I’ll head back to the ship to scratch it.”

“What, and miss the fun of going through a narrow stone passage where you don’t know what’s at the top?” Chase took a few experimental steps, his flippered feet kicking up more silt. Even with the neutral buoyancy the deep suit provided, its inflexible body meant the best he could manage was an unflattering waddle. Its broad, flat chest also caused a surprising amount of resistance from the water when he tried to move forward. “Sod it, walking’s going to take forever. Let’s try the thrusters.”

He kicked himself off the seabed, tilting into a horizontal position. Castille and Kari followed suit. Once they were with him, Chase reached up with his left hand to take hold of a control stick protruding from the suit’s chest on a flexible stalk.

“Okay, stay close,” he ordered. “If we have any trouble, or anyone has com problems, get straight back to the sub and wait for the others. Let’s go.”

He pushed his thumb down on the sprung wheel set into the end of the stick. The controls for the thrusters built into the suit’s casing were simple: three speed settings to go forward, one for reverse, and releasing the wheel would automatically stop the motors. He started off at the lowest speed, using his feet to adjust his pitch. Once satisfied that he had full control, he increased speed to the second setting. The fiber-optic cable linking him to the submersible spooled out behind him like a line of spider silk.